Hundreds of asylum seekers will be ringing in the new year in Chicago after Texas Gov. Greg Abbott (R) flew a group of migrants to the Windy City for the second time in two weeks. About 350 asylum seekers reportedly boarded the private chartered flight from San Antonio, which arrived in the far-flung exurb of Rockford early Sunday morning. In an interview on CBS hours later, Chicago Mayor Brandon Johnson castigated Abbott as “afraid and mad” about the state of his own border, warning that the conservative governor is “determined to sow the seeds of chaos” by turning a human crisis into a national security threat. “What we have is clearly an international and federal crisis that local governments are being asked to subsidize, and this is unsustainable,” Johnson told “Face The Nation” host Martha Raddatz. Chicago, like many cities with Democratic leadership, has been absorbing a steady stream of asylum seekers without coordination with the Texas government—a move that Johnson said puts undue strain on local governments who lack the resources available in border regions. In an effort to stem the influx, Chicago recently cracked down on “rogue bus operators”—leading Abbott to send planes instead, vowing that more will be coming. Currently, nearly 600 migrants are waiting to be processed in Chicago’s 27 shelters, CBS reported, with a total of 26,000 people now seeking asylum in the city. Local officials said they expect 14 more buses on New Year’s Eve, nine of them from the Rockford flight.
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